


the same sweet shock

by spookyleo



Category: Pilgrimage (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Diarmuid is a Young Adult, M/M, Masturbation, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pre-Slash, Religion, Religious Conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25061005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookyleo/pseuds/spookyleo
Summary: His blasphemy was Earth shaking, went against all laws of nature and of God, but Diarmuid struggled to feel guilt for it. His blasphemy turned everything upside down, because it meant that everything he knew and had been taught was wrong.He began to see himself as Adam.Character study for Brother Diarmuid.
Relationships: Brother Diarmuid/The Mute
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	the same sweet shock

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in the middle of writing for my Inception Big Bang right now, but I took a break to write this before it burst out of my head.  
> I'm really interested in seeing Diarmuid's understanding of his sexuality reflect his character arc of being the new age of religion and the representative of new ideas and understandings of a relationship with god.  
> I don't think he would feel guilty for it! I really don't. I guess in meta the movie was about a changing understanding of religion and about how religion should feel good!  
> So I decided to write about that. Lmao. Hope you enjoy. 
> 
> Oh! And listen to Be by Hozier!

As Diarmuid approached his nineteenth Summer on God’s green world, he began to learn of an ode to blasphemy written deep within his heart.

His blasphemy was Earth shaking, went against all laws of nature and of God, but Diarmuid struggled to feel guilt for it. His blasphemy turned everything upside down, because it meant that everything he knew and had been taught was wrong.

He began to see himself as Adam.

Adam, in the garden of Eden, as he learnt of himself and the beauty of the world around him. As he explored the ideas of father and son, of husband and wife, of good and evil. As he discovered each new feeling, experience, emotion that a human being could learn of.

Diarmuid felt alone in his experiences, because he was. The Brothers at the monastery seemed ancient, in comparison, despite them only being twice Diarmuid’s age; everything he went through seemed new, revolutionary. Each new discovery left him feeling more in tune with the Earth, the ground under his feet, the heat of the sun in the sky.

Like when Diarmuid’s dreams increasingly became populated with figures: silhouetted and graceful as they washed themselves down at the riverside, muscular shoulders and eyes glistening in the dark, inviting and handsome. Like the images of Christ he so often saw drawn on scrolls, on the pages of books, languid and wanting. The ripples of skin, smooth over muscle, arms held up against the crucifix and just a scrap of fabric covering His modesty.

He didn’t speak to the brothers about it, because it wasn’t their story to hear. The Brothers, when they taught Diarmuid of life, taught him that it wasn’t for people like them. That thoughts, dreams, imaginations of skin and the shape of bodies was sin, and to be fought against. Implanted in the mind by the Devil to tempt one away from the Light of God.

“I do not know,” Diarmuid told the Mute one day after another dream of heat. He felt safer around the Mute. Maybe it was his lack of religion, or his perpetual outsider status. The warmth in the looks the Mute gave him, the friendship. It wasn’t fatherly, not like the way the brothers cast down on him, not like he was trying to teach Diarmuid a lesson. Maybe it was that the Mute listened to him.

They were collecting herbs as Diarmuid spoke to him, in the far side of the woods. Near the river.

“If anything, I feel closer to The Lord when I dream this way,” he continued. “It does not feel like it is the Devil that gives me visions.”

The Mute grunted in acknowledgement from across the way. He watched his hands as he picked herbs, but Diarmuid knew he was listening closely. Kindly.

“It feels like heaven,” Diarmuid said, and he felt the Mute’s eyes on him.

Blasphemy slowly came to mean little to Diarmuid. He thanked The Lord for his thoughts, his visions, his dreams. He thanked God for the beauty he saw in the whisper of the trees and the roar of the ocean when he stood on the beach. The oranges and pinks in the sunset that set blooms in his chest, and the way he felt when he came to associate what beauty was with the way he saw the Mute.

It didn’t surprise Diarmuid when the figures in his dreams became the Mute. He wouldn’t tell the man of it, but it wasn’t a shock.

What was a shock was when Diarmuid woke up one morning – warm from the early rising Sun, before the Brothers had arisen – hard and aching against his stomach.

The Brothers had taught him that to touch oneself was akin to self-injury, to allowing in evil, but as Diarmuid stretched out atop his bedding, everyone around him asleep, that was only a dull drone in the back of his mind.

He thought again about Adam, afterwards, as he washed himself and his robes off at the river in the morning sun. He wondered how Adam had felt when this had first happened to him. The surprise at the wash of pleasure heralded over his body, like the sing of angels, like the first bite of the forbidden fruit. He wondered if Adam’s shock would taste as sweet as the rays of gentleness inside Diarmuid’s chest.

Diarmuid decided, however Adam felt, it would not have been unlike this. 

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on tumblr at rightearring.


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